Incident in St. Michael

Army live firing: Ammunition caused a fire

A wildfire was triggered during live firing (archive photo).(Bild: Jakob Traby)

A wildfire broke out during live firing with tracer ammunition at the Ortnerhof firing range near St. Michael (Styria) on Tuesday. As the military command announced in a press release, the flames quickly spread over an area of around 2000 square meters.

As the soldiers were unable to get the fire under control with the available resources, helicopters from the army and the Ministry of the Interior were called in, according to the military command. Several fire departments were also deployed.

In the afternoon, it was reported that the fire was under control and should soon be completely extinguished. No one was injured. According to an army spokesperson, the cause was clearly tracer ammunition, which was fired at around 11.30 am.

A member of the Kapfenberg-Diemlach fire department was also deployed.(Bild: FF Kapfenberg-Diemlach)

Similar incidents in 2021 and 2019
This is not the first such incident in St. Michael: in November 2021, the so-called target area, i.e. the slope behind the targets, caught fire. Just like today, there was hardly any precipitation in the weeks leading up to it and therefore very dry conditions. Tracer ammunition ignited a fire.

The flames spread rapidly. No fewer than 15 fire departments and two helicopters were deployed, with an area of one hectare affected at the time.

In April 2019, a signal cartridge also started a fire on the steep slope. The signal cartridge fired from a 57 flare pistol (LP57) had not completely burned out and fell into the steep slope, where the fire broke out half an hour later.